Rihanna | Rated R Look, it’s not as if there were a song where she says, “Chris Brown, you chicken-shit motherfucker, your ass is gonna pay.”

Beyond Dilla and Dipset With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.

Rihanna | Rated R Look, it’s not as if there were a song where she says, “Chris Brown, you chicken-shit motherfucker, your ass is gonna pay.”

Beyond Dilla and Dipset With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.

PHX @ SXSW! Don't be so shocked if the coming week brings with it not just a stretch of balmier weather but also a palpable decrease in the douche point. That's because the vast majority of the music industry has up and JetBlued 2000 miles south to Austin for SXSW (a/k/a South by Southwest).

Mr. Incongeniality The night before this interview, Bomshot pulled what might go down as the most boneheaded stunt in Boston hip-hop history when, in the middle of a crowded Slaine and Ill Bill show at Harpers Ferry, he attempted to cheap-shot the former from behind.

Welsh rarebit Boston Lyric Opera hasn't had much success lately with either its home-grown or its second-hand products, but its latest import — the Welsh National Opera's 2004 production of Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss's third collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, his favorite librettist — is a charmer.

The Big Hurt: What would Jesus download? True, I may be the wrong guy to review the top tracks on the Billboard Christian Songs chart. I’m not religious, so songs about Jesus mean about as much to me as songs about Popeye.

Pardon the interruption Maybe it was when saxophonist Kelly Roberge, instrument in hand, leapt off the Cambridge YMCA Theatre stage in the middle of a performance by the Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra and fled the auditorium — as if in extreme gastro-intestinal distress.